The M&A and Corporate Finance team of Roland Berger has supported over 1,000 transactions in the past three years. Sascha Haghani, a senior partner at the firm and head of Roland Berger’s Restructuring & Corporate Finance: “We have helped many of the world’s top companies and financial investors understand the true essence of value creation and make smarter decisions in investor support and M&A.”

With over 2,400 employees, Roland Berger is one of globe’s larger consulting firms, and Europe’s largest home grown consultancy that is positioned in the top of the strategy & operations segment of the consulting industry. The firm’s Corporate Finance arm helps clients – companies, private equity firms, family offices and entrepreneurs – with a range of M&A-related services.

These include valuations (assessment of target value), commercial due diligence (analysis of market drivers and trends, competitors, customer landscape, as well as a target's top line business plan), IPO review (crafting an independent market research report as part of submission for an Initial Public Offering), and operational due diligence (assessment of key operational and CAPEX assumptions, benchmarking of KPIs and working capital analysis).

Following deal closing, Roland Berger’s M&A team support clients with post-merger integration, such as integration planning (management, business, cultural), setting up 100 day plans (a roadmap for the first 100 days following closing) and broader project management on the integration across divisions, functions and processes. The firm’s consultants also help management of buyer/seller with value optimisation in deal settings, providing propositions including business planning, cost improvement and commercial improvement.

Specifically for private equity firms, which are booming on the back cheap capital and investment confidence, Roland Berger helps investors with target search (analysis of customers and growth markets), dealmaking, integration (integration blueprints) and strategic work such as fund strategy and portfolio optimisation.

“We offer comprehensive commercial advice across the entire investment cycle, from the holding period to the end of the road, to both buying and divesting companies. And once an acquisition has been completed, our expert consultants help clients increase the value of their asset with a 100-day programme and post-merger integration,” explained Haghani.

Over 1,000 deals supported

Data released by Roland Berger reveals that its Corporate Finance arm has seen busy times in the past three years, having been tapped by over 1,000 clients for its services in the period. The firm’s consultants were most active in Industrial & Technology segment, at over 230 deals, with the number of transactions supported in the Consumer Goods & Retail, Automotive, and Pharma & Healthcare above the 100 mark.

From a country perspective, the consultancy was most active in the DACH region – Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This is not a major surprise, as the Germany headquartered consulting firm has a strong presence in the region with six offices in Germany and one each in Vienna and Zurich, while its Corporate Finance wing is led from the region as well. France is the second most important country for Roland Berger – the consultancy has a large office in Paris, and increasingly benefits from the fact that its Chief Executive Office is a Frenchman, Charles-Edouard Bouée, currently in his second term at the office. The Benelux follows in third place, with the Amsterdam office, which has around 100 consultants, the largest regional contributor to the total with 90+ deals.

The data shows that Roland Berger’s corporate finance footprint spans the globe – among the countries where deals have been supported are Russia, India, Brazil, China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Commenting on what he believes makes the practice stand out from its rivals, Haghani said, “Making the right investment decisions requires a trusted partner – someone with profound industrial and methodological know-how, someone who identifies the true value of a target by providing holistic commercial and operational due diligence support. The right partner doesn’t simply tell you what you want to hear, but rather what you really need to know about the industry's success factors and the target's business model.”